and brandy brought out from France, tobacco and sugar brought north from the French West Indies, all offered excellent chances to enterprising Yankees, who came in with foodstuffs and building materials of their own. One vessel sailed for New York with a cargo of claret and brandy that netted her owners a profit of a hundred per cent, even after paying the usual charges demanded by the French custom-house officials for what really was a smuggler's licence.

Fishing, smuggling, and theft were the three great industries of Louisbourg. The traders shared the profits of the smuggling. But the intendant and his officials kept most of the choice thieving for themselves.

The genuine settlers--and a starveling crew they were--wrested their debt-laden livelihood from the local fishing. This was by no means bad in itself. But, like other fishermen before and since, they were in perpetual bondage to the traders, who took good care not to let accounts get evened up. A happier class of fishermen made up the engages, who were paid by government to 'play settler' for a term of years, during which they helped to swell the official census of uncongenial Louisbourg. The regular French fishing fleet of course returned to France at the end of every season, and thus enjoyed a full spell of French delights on shore.

The Acadians supplied Louisbourg with meat and vegetables. These were brought in by sea; for there were no roads worth mentioning; nor, in the contemporary state of Cape Breton, was there any need for roads. The farmers were few, widely scattered, and mostly very poor. The only prosperous settlement within a long day's march was situated on the beautiful Mira river. James Gibson, a Boston merchant and militiaman, who served against Louisbourg in 1745, was much taken by the appearance of an establishment 'at the mouth of a large salmon fishery,' by one 'very handsome house, with two large barns, two large gardens, and fine fields of corn,' and by another with 'six rooms on a floor and well furnished.' He adds that 'in one of the barns were fifteen loads of hay, and room sufficient for sixty horses and cattle.' In 1753 the intendant sent home a report about a proposed 'German' settlement near the 'Grand Lake of Mira.' A new experiment was then being tried, the importation of settlers from Alsace-Lorraine. But five years afterwards Cape Breton had been lost to France for ever.

The fact is that the French never really colonized Cape Breton at large, and Louisbourg least of all. They knew the magnificent possibilities of Sydney harbour, but its mere extent prevented their attempting to make use of it. They saw that the whole island was a maritime paradise, with seaports in its very heart as well as round its shores. But they were a race of gallant, industrious landsmen at home, with neither the wish nor the aptitude for a nautical life abroad. They could not have failed to see that there was plenty of timber in some parts of the island, and that the soil was fit to bear good crops of grain in others. A little prospecting would also have shown them iron, coal, and gypsum. But their official parasites did not want to see smuggling and peculation replaced by industry and trade. Nothing, indeed, better proves how little they thought of making Ile Royale a genuine colony than their utter failure to exploit any one of its teeming natural resources in forest, field, or mine.

What the French did with extraneous resources and artificial aids in the town of Louisbourg is more to the purpose in hand. The problem of their position, and of its strength and weakness in the coming clash of arms, depended on six naval, military, and governmental factors, each one of which must be considered before the whole can be appreciated. These six factors were--the government, the garrison, the militia, the Indians, the navy, and the fortress.

Get rich and go home. The English-speaking peoples, whose ancestors once went to England as oversea emigrants, and two-thirds of whom are now themselves the scions of successive migrations across the Seven Seas, cannot understand how intensely the general run of French officials detested colonial service, especially in a place like Louisbourg, which was everything the average Frenchman hated most. This British failure to understand a national trait, which is still as strongly marked as ever, accounts for a good deal of the exaggerated belief in the strength of the French position in America. The British Americans who tried to think out plans of conquest were wont to under-estimate their own unorganized resources and to over-estimate the organized resources of the French, especially when they set their minds on Louisbourg.

The British also entertained the erroneous idea that 'the whole country was under one command.' This was the very thing it was not. The French system was the autocratic one without the local autocrat; for the functions of the governor and the intendant overlapped each other, and all disputes had to be referred to Quebec, where the functions of another governor and another intendant also overlapped each other. If no decision could be reached at Quebec, and the question at issue was one of sufficient importance, the now double imbroglio would be referred to the Supreme Council in France, which would write back to Quebec, whence the decision would be forwarded to Louisbourg, where it would arrive months after many other troubles had grown out of the original dispute.

The system was false from the start, because the overlapping was intentional. The idea was to prevent any one man from becoming too strong and too independent. The result was to keep governors and intendants at perpetual loggerheads and to divide every station into opposing parties. Did the governor want money and material for the fortifications? Then the intendant was sure the military chest, which was in his own charge, could not afford it. The governor might sometimes gain his ends by giving a definite emergency order under his hand and seal. But, if the emergency could not be proved, this laid him open to great risks from the intendant's subsequent recriminations before the Superior Council in Quebec or the Supreme Council in France. The only way such a system could be worked at all was either by corrupt collusion or by superhuman co-operation between the two conflicting parties, or by appointing a man of genius who could make every other official discharge his proper duties and no more. Corrupt collusion was not very common, because the governors were mostly naval or military men, and the naval and military men were generally honest. Co-operation was impossible between two merely average men; and no genius was ever sent to such a place as Louisbourg. The ablest man in either of the principal posts was the notorious intendant Bigot, who began here on a small scale the consummate schemes that proved so disastrously successful at Quebec. Get rich and go home.

The minor governmental life of Louisbourg was of a piece with the major. There were four or five lesser members of the Superior Council, which also had jurisdiction over Ile St Jean, as Prince Edward Island was then called. The lucrative chances of the custom-house were at the mercy of four under-paid officials grandiloquently called a Court of Admiralty. An inferior court known as the bailiwick tried ordinary civil suits and breaches of the peace. This bailiwick also offered what might be euphemistically called 'business opportunities' to enterprising members. True, there was no police to execute its decrees; and at one time a punctilious resident complained that 'there was not even a common hangman, nor a jail, nor even a tormentor to rack the criminals or inflict other appropriate tortures.' But appeals took a long time and cost much money; so even the officials of the bailiwick could pick up a living by threats of the law's delay, on the one hand, and promises of perverted local justice, on the other. That there was money to be made, in spite of the meagre salaries, is proved by the fact that the best journeyman wig-maker in Louisbourg 'grew extremely rich in different branches of commerce, especially in the contraband,' after filling the dual position of judge of the admiralty and judge of the bailiwick, both to the apparent satisfaction of his friend the intendant.

The next factor was the garrison of regulars. This was under the direct command of the king's lieutenant, who took his orders from the governor. The troops liked Louisbourg no better than the officials did. True, there were taverns in plenty: even before Louisbourg was officially founded they had become such a thriving nuisance that orders for their better control had been sent out from France. But there was no other place for the ordinary soldier to go to in his spare time. The officers felt the want of a larger outlook even more than the men did; and neither man nor officer ever went to Louisbourg if he could help it. When Montcalm, the greatest Frenchman the New World ever saw, came out to Canada, there was eager competition among the troops at home to join his army in the field. Officers paid large sums for the honour of exchanging into any one of the battalions ordered to the front; and when volunteers were called for from the ranks every single man stepped forward. But no Montcalm came out to Louisbourg, and nothing but bounties could get a volunteer. There were only between five and six hundred regulars in the whole garrison during the first siege, twenty-five years after the foundation, and nearly half of these were foreigners, mostly 'pay-fighting Swiss.'

The third factor was the militia. Every able-bodied man, not specially exempt for other duties, was liable for service in time of war; and the whole island could be drawn upon for any great emergency at Louisbourg. Between thirteen and fourteen hundred men were got under arms for the siege of 1745. Those who lived in Louisbourg had the advantage of a little slack discipline and a little slack drill. Those in the country had some practice in the handling of firearms. But, taken all round, it would be an exaggeration to call them even quarter-trained